Thanks to IBM and OSUOSL we have some new fairly capable
(virtual) machines for powerpc* ports. See
the announcement for more info. In particular, please note the
call for powerpc64 porters. If you're interested in contributing to
such a port, please get in touch with DSA.

Google Summer of Code project is up again. As usual, it is a
good chance to get some work done and, more importantly, to let
students who are passionate about Free Software discover Debian.
I've
delegated the task of GSoC admins --- thanks Ana, Gergely, and
Sukhbir! A call for project proposals has already been
sent out; there isn't much time left, so please hurry up and
drop your ideas to the wiki page
and contact the soc-coordination mailing list.

A couple of important discussions have been going on on
-project. The first is the old "trademark vs DFSG" discussion. I've
posted there results
from legal advice that I've sought on the matter, based on your
suggestions. Then, I've posted a
proposal on how to deal with trademarks issues in the
archive.

The second discussion is about Debian affiliation with OSI.
We've been approached by OSI about that, as I've summarized
on -project. Helped by the feedback received, I've
decided to go ahead with affiliation and I'm now discussing
with OSI representative the next steps.

The long running work on software patent issues in the archive
has been concluded publishing a policy on
the matter. We now have a contact point and legal advice with
whom we can discuss specific issues if/when they arise; hopefully
that would help us to discriminate actual issues in the archive (if
any) from the vast amount of FUD in the area.

Talks, interviews, and the like

Following up Debian related talks at FOSDEM, I've been
interviewed, together with Lars Wirzenius and Wookey, for
The Register.

I've took part at a FOSDEM panel session on comparing the
organization of local user groups, ambassadors, and the like. We've
mostly to learn from others in this area, but I've took the change
to summarize what we currently have in a slide
deck.

Sprints

Plenty of sprints related news!

DSA
and the Groupware
team will be holding sprints later on in March, while DAM /
FrontDesk are having one right now co-located with the BSP in
Moenchengladbach

debbugs (AKA bugs.debian.org) hackers are
organizing a sprint to get people interested in contributing to
the code base up to speed. If you're, drop a line in the thread

It would be amazing to have an average of one sprint per month
for 2012, and we're on good track for it. If you want to help,
organize one for your team as documented on the wiki.

Legal stuff

Thanks to SPI, we've established contacts with the owners of
debian.eu, domain we believe we legitimately own. As a first step
they've set up HTTP redirection from debian.eu to debian.org
(instead of a computer hardware shop, as it was before) and we're
now discussing actual transfer of domain ownership to a Debian
Trusted Organization.

We've contacted the Japanese trademark office to transfer the
"debian" trademark there to SPI. Thanks to the previous owners (all
Debian developers or contributors) for agreeing to the move. Now
"only" a nasty pile of paperwork remains to be done.

Appointments

Miscellaneous

We have been invited to attend the OpenStack
summit in April and have a presence there, free of charge. Loic
Dachary, active member of the OpenStack packaging team in Debian,
has agreed to go and represent Debian there. Thanks a lot to
Stefano Maffulli for the invitation and to Loic for his
availability!

We are in the process of joining—as a project, instead of
relying on individual maintainers as in the past—the ISC forum to
get access to embargoed vulnerability information for important
pieces of software such as BIND and DHCP. They've kindly offered us
membership free of charge. I've submitted a draft of the membership
agreement to SPI and I'm waiting for their decision.

Steady progress on the front of periodic budget reports, thanks
to the work of Martin Michlmayr. We've discussed at length during
FOSDEM and agreed on procedures to query the state of Debian
finances that work for both auditors and the DPL. Martin has also
set up a shared ledger repository and already checked in into it a
lot of money transactions for the past few years—not from all
trusted organizations yet, though. Have faith, we'll get there

Happy Debian hacking.

PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at
master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.*